This disclosure relates to a system and method for generating and editing media files.
Although there has been extensive development in speech-to-text (S2T) technology over the last decade, there has been surprisingly limited adoption of S2T technology among some groups who work in areas that require extensive transcription. By way of example one such group that has not yet extensively embraced S2T is journalists. A journalist typically spends hours each week (and often each day) listening to and manually transcribing the content of his/her interviews before writing stories for newspapers, radio, television or online.
In newsrooms around the world transcription is the bottleneck in every journalist's workflow, requiring a repetitive and laborious process: 1) listen to a few seconds of the recorded interview/news conference; 2) pause the audio/video; 3) manually type the words just heard; 4) play a few more seconds; 5) type; 6) repeat. It can take a journalist approximately one hour to precisely transcribe 10 minutes of audio. Furthermore, at current rates, outsourced manual transcription is simply not a realistic option.
The inaccuracies of S2T systems have made it perilously unreliable for an industry such as journalism that has accuracy as its foundation. Transcription errors can be difficult to identify, requiring a time-consuming review of the audio/video (A/V) recording and the corresponding transcript. Transcription errors also make it impossible to accurately search S2T transcripts. Consequently journalists and editors find it safer to stick to the traditional, if inefficient, method of manual transcription. The arrival of contextually-aware natural language programming (NLP) enabling computers to derive meaning from human or natural language input is lessening transcription errors, but there are still errors and the lack of verifiable S2T continues to keep journalists away.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved ST2 systems that can be efficiently and cost effectively employed by high volume media users such as journalists.